The present invention relates to the field of gathering and standardizing customer purchase information for target marketing to credit card customers.
Every business enterprise works to attract new customers and retain existing customers. Various ways of soliciting business are known. Direct mailing is one know method for soliciting business. A business will send mail to a potential customer, offering various goods and services. Direct mailing, however, may suffer from the drawbacks of offering a potential customer goods or services that are not wanted or needed. Telephone solicitation is another known method. Telephone calls, however, may suffer from the drawback of being considered intrusive by potential customers.
Customer research, including survey information, may assist a marketer in providing services and goods that are wanted. Surveys, however, do not address the particular needs or wants of an individual customer. Surveys, at best, may identify trends among a group of people, not the wants or needs of an individual consumer.
Customer research may also be used to retain existing customers. A company may obtain feed back from existing customers, thereby enabling the company to ascertain what product and services customers want, and how existing products and services can be changed. Such customer research, however, may be difficult to obtain, as it depends upon customers to respond to surveys and/or questions. Meaningful customer feedback may be impractical for companies with large numbers of customers, as the only way to obtain feedback may be by use of telephone calls or direct mailings. Customer feedback may not indicate information on how to attract new customers.
These and other drawbacks exist.
An object of the present invention is to overcome these and other drawbacks in existing systems.
Another object of the invention is to provide a system and method for storing and manipulating information relating to individual customer purchases.
Another object of the invention is to provide a system and method for creating an organizational structure to store customer purchase information, where the organizational structure comprises a hierarchy of categories and sub-categories.
Another object of the invention is to provide a system and method of creating customer preferences based on customer purchase information.
Another object of the invention is to provide a system and method for targeting offers to customers based on customer preferences.
Another object of the invention is to provide a system and method for placing customer purchase information in an organizational structure through use of a link file, where the link file comprises a plurality of instructions for placing customer purchase information in predetermined places in the organizational structure.
Another object of the invention is to provide a system and method for creating a customer preference database, where the customer preference database includes information about a customer preference and score for various categories and sub-categories.
These and other objects of the invention are accomplished according to various embodiments of the invention. According to one embodiment of the invention, an organizational structure may be created for storing customer purchase information. The organizational structure may comprise a plurality of categories and sub-categories arranged in a hierarchical structure. Customer purchase information placed in one sub-category may be place in a sub-category or category located above in the hierarchical order.
According to another embodiment of the invention, a link file may be created for placing customer purchase information into an organizational structure. A link file may contain a plurality of instructions to a processor. The processor places customer purchase information received from a plurality of different sources, into specific locations within an organizational structure.
Other objects and advantages exist for the present invention.